Babylon
by element78
Summary: Magic AU- There is a City on the ocean, ancestral home to one people and belonging now to another. There is a war coming, and there will be no victory.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is epic. Like, epically epic. I have been wanting to write this for about two years now, but always chickened out right as I sat down to start typing. Then, randomly, I get the urge to write something epic instead of my usual semi-AU angsty one-shot. So I take the plunge- my first official foray into real, multi-chaptered fanfic.

If you want to skip the history of the tii'ahna- yes, pronounced the same way as the Disney chick, and no, I didn't get the idea from that- just move on down to the line break. The real story picks up there, and there will be a sort of watered-down Tii'ahna for Dummies in some future chapter.

Beware, children, for here there be magic.

* * *

><p>All the children know the legend of the tii'ahna. It's not a difficult story to learn- indeed, the hardest part of it is remembering which bits are truths and which bits are embellishments set in place by generations of parents wishing to teach their children a lesson. The story can be spun any one of a dozen directions to impress a certain moral upon young minds. The tii'ahna themselves certainly could not care less what their land-going cousins thought of them. Dirt-men, they call them. <em>L'hrenli<em>, in their liquid tongue. They scorn and scoff and turn away, and so the legend grows by abstract and absence. No one has met a true tii'ahna in over three generations. No one knows the elusive race well enough to laugh at the absurdities that become the flesh of the legend, clinging to the bones of the truth.

The legend, in its truest form, goes like this:

The men who lived on the southern coast of the northern sea all had to leave their towns one wild spring day, sailing into a storm to escape a war. The invaders settled in the abandoned homes to wait, confident of the sailors' return.

Return they did, but they were changed. They possessed powers now, inexplicable and unstoppable powers which they used to utterly crush the invaders. Here the stories vary greatly, as everyone has their own opinion of how they did this, or what that power was; some say there was no arcane involvement at all, only sound tactics and the advantage of surprise.

Say what you would, the people of the northern sea were changed, and still changing. Over three generations they took to the water more and more, for longer periods, until finally the great-grandchildren of those first sailors all at once left the land one day and did not return. They have gills now, the stories all agree, gills and a tail for swimming, claws and needle-tipped fangs for hunting. Eyes gone keen in darkness but useless in the light, ears sharper than the best hunting hounds'. And their blood-gift, stronger than ever, of magic inherited from those first changed men.

They claimed the northern sea as their own, chasing away any sailors or fishermen, haunting the overland routes that strayed too close to shore. They were wild and free, laughing as they dove into the water, children of the stoic and staid sea who were as lively and spirited as a tempest. Soon enough, the calm sea was too small for them, and they spread to the ocean beyond.

The tii'ahna are not the greatest predators in the water- in fact, on the oceanic food chain they land somewhere in the middle. But they are sharp-minded, more curious than the _l'hrenli_, and they work well together to stave off predators. Thus they explored their new world, gladly leaving the old behind, and thus they found the City.

The City sat underwater, protected from the ocean by a vast encompassing spell, for centuries, possibly millennia. The tii'ahna, ever curious, finally wormed their way past the spell and into the City itself.

As those who now live there know, the City has a gentle sentience of its own, a low-grade awareness of its surroundings and its inhabitants. It knew its new people needed air heavy with moisture for skin that could not be allowed to dry and thick with oxygen for withered lungs that had not been used properly for almost two hundred years. It gave them this, and they brought life to its dark hallways. They claimed this as their home and named it Atlantis, which means something in their exotic tongue, although no dirt-man will ever know what. Perhaps the land-goers have no word in their language to allow for proper translation.

Here the story once again splits into multiple paths, for here is the break between man and tii'ahna. Until this point, the tii'ahna had open, if somewhat strained, communications with the land people. There was some trade of goods and news, of spices grown inland and fish caught in deep waters. Mostly, though, there was simple talk- the tii'ahna were an anarchistic lot, falling back to the ways of clans and building among them no great, race-spanning nation, which they would not tolerate. The men took this as a good sign, for otherwise the tii'ahna held all advantages- land and sea, magic, claws and ears so keen a tii'ahna underwater could hear the heartbeat of the child standing on the dock. Or so they say.

But here the tii'ahna turned away, for here the men took the one thing that was not theirs to take: Atlantis.

The City rose from the ocean floor of a sudden, rising to float on the ocean's surface. It shed its shielding spell and flung open its doors. And it blinded dark-keen eyes and burned sensitive skin, and finally forced the tii'ahna to leave, for in their complacency they had allowed their lungs to wither too much. They could not breathe the thin surface air.

The first man to set foot on Atlantis paid for his transgression with his life, as did the second and third. When a military unit, assigned by the king, made the journey, they found a half-dozen rotting corpses desecrating the City's surreal beauty. The men had been butchered, cut to ribbons by claws sharpened on fish bone and shark skin.

The bodies were given a proper burial at sea and nothing was said of it- under any other circumstances, such slaughter would be an act of war, but the king understood the tii'ahna's plight. He offered to share the City with them, should they somehow find a way to return to it.

This, evidently, was not the right thing to say, for the tii'ahna had not been seen since.

So men had claimed Atlantis, and so men came to love it as much as the tii'ahna had. The king moved there, and his court, and the brightest minds of his time. He would not repeat the tii'ahna's mistake. Should the City someday return to the depths, he wanted to know about it before it happened, not be caught off-guard. So he set a special class of soldier to exploring the city, to look for signs of its builders and anything they might have left behind.

And so goes the story of the tii'ahna in bare-bones form. The City grows and prospers, and for eighty-six years only human children have roamed its halls. The tii'ahna, all but trapped now in their prison of water, can only watch in envy.

* * *

><p>As a child, John Sheppard had heard the story. As a teenager, he had taken the near-ritualistic night swim alone, taunting the fish-men with such easy prey. As an adult- and the commander of Atlantis' military forces, a position which he had not truly aspired to so much as slid sideways into- he saw things a little differently.<p>

Countless times, he found himself bumping shoulders with someone while walking down the hallway, only to turn and find no one there. He heard the echoes of voices, a fluid language, and children's laughter. He smelled scents he could not properly describe, scents that did not appeal to a human.

"Echoes and ghosts," Teyla said, smooth and serene, the one time he had asked her. "The City remembers those who came before."

"The City _betrayed_ those who came before," John replied, brutally honest because Teyla always deserved honesty. She mere smiled sadly at him.

"Perhaps. Who can say? Perhaps the City rises and sinks on a set pattern, and the tii'ahna merely ignored the signs."

No one would believe that. It wasn't fair to either one or the other, to say the humans or tii'ahna are the smarter. But the tii'ahna are, assuredly, the more voraciously curious, and they would have noticed and investigated any changes.

"Had you been a child of Atlantis, the ghosts would not bother you anymore," Teyla said, smoothly returning to a subject they won't butt heads over. "Although you do seem unusually sensitive to them."

"Thanks," John muttered, not entirely sure if he meant it sarcastically or not. She smiled again, her people-pleasing smile, and moved away.

John wandered the halls for a while, searching for one intersection in particular. When he found it, he ran his hand along the wall as he knelt.

There. An etching, scratched painstakingly into the metal by small hands. It took a keen eye to see that the tool used was not a knife, but a claw. John had no idea what it was supposed to be, perhaps some deepsea creature no human would ever see, but he always liked this little piece of artwork for some reason. Maybe just because it was nice to know the tii'ahna, for all their differences, retained some fundamental similarities.

Three weeks later, he was out on his morning run when his comm line bleeped. He slowed up, collapsed against a pillar as he answered.

"You might want to get back here, sir," said the voice on the other end of the line. Ford, John knew- a rookie, but a good kid. He did fair enough acting as John's right-hand man now that Lorne was playing shadow for the Queen.

As if summoned by the thought, the Queen's transport slowly drifted into view around the corner. Judging by the waves the ship was kicking up, she was moving at a decent click. It just didn't show well from there.

"I see her," he told Ford. "I'll be there."

Then he stretched his legs out and ran to greet his Queen.


	2. Chapter 2

3,999. You have no idea how hard it is to not find a place to insert just one more word. You see, I gave myself a goal: four thousand words per chapter, approximately. That way it's a nice decent-sized chapter for you lot, and I won't go completely batty and put up an eight-thousand word chapter one day and three two-thousand word chapters in a row afterwards. 3,999 is the official Word word-count, minus author's notes- I have no idea how the site does word counts, but it always manages to find about two hundred or so that Word apparently missed. And expect a new chapter once a week, Tuesday or Wednesday. Any more than that and I'm apt to burn out on this story.

Also, welcome to the true beginning of the story.

* * *

><p>It would not do, Rodney knew, to be caught puking over the railing of the Queen's transport. Still, he leaned forward, resting his weight on his toes, watching the white flashes of foam over the blue-green water. This sort of nausea left a coppery taste, as if he'd bitten his tongue.<p>

"Seasick again?" The words and tone were purely professional. Rodney didn't bother looking up.

"Something like that," he muttered in reply. Then he pushed himself upright, centered himself perfectly, and turned to face his questioner.

"Did you need something, Lorne?" That he knew the man's name was due to constant exposure- ever since the soldier had been promoted to head of the Queen's guard, he and Rodney ran into each other daily. Lorne, not the least put out by the use of his name instead of his rank or Rodney's snappish, impatient tone, jerked his chin towards the cabin.

"You've got an audience," he said, then turned and walked away, fully confident Rodney would keep up.

* * *

><p>Elizabeth was focused on her work, writing notes to herself in the margins of the write-up of the most recent Council session, when there was a knock at the door. Or rather, the beginning of a knock, for the door flew open before she could even look up and Rodney McKay was pushing his way past his escort and into her office.<p>

"Yes?" he half-demanded, impatient and distracted.

"You can go, Major, thank you," Elizabeth said, looking around Rodney. Lorne pointed surreptitiously at the scientist and mouthed a word- seasick. The Queen looked closer at her friend and found he was indeed pale and sweaty, clinging to the doorframe with one hand.

Carefully not asking if he was all right, since it would take twenty minutes to regain control of the conversation, Elizabeth shuffled through the papers and pulled out one in particular. "Have a seat, Rodney," she said casually.

When she had first given him the position of royal scientist, there had been a general outcry from the scientific community. He would not treat her with due respect, she was told. He was rude and impatient and self-centered and unbelievably arrogant.

He's almost as good as he thinks he is, she had learned. And somewhere in all the bluster, a decent man is hiding.

"There are two things we should discuss," Elizabeth told him as he sat down opposite her. "First, and I know you hate this, is the Atlantean faction."

Rodney sank into his seat a little bit, eyes losing focus. Politics held as much appeal for him as science did for her.

"What do they want me to do?" he asked sourly.

"_I_ want you to cooperate nicely with them. Nicely, Rodney," she added sharply as he brightened- she was asking for this because they hadn't, which meant he could get away with more before someone went and tattled on him. "And I mean normal person nice, not your nice. Try not to make anyone cry the first week you're there. The chief scientist is a man named Radek Zelenka. He's good at his job, from what I understand. You'll be dealing mostly with him."

"Do I answer to him, or him to me?" Rodney asked, suspiciously keen on the answer. Elizabeth stared coolly at him as she considered. If Zelenka were put in charge, Rodney would be marching into her office to bitch every two hours for the next month. If Rodney were put in charge, he would strip the City's science department of their will to live within a week.

"Neither," she finally decided. "You're a guest there, which means so long as you behave, so will he. If you don't, I'm sure he'll find a way to make your life miserable."

She didn't need to tell him that, if that were the case, Zelenka would have a silent but powerful ally: the City itself, siding as always with those it knew. The Atlantean faction was so named because they had the City's favor.

"And the second thing?" Rodney asked, wisely leaving well enough alone. Elizabeth looked at him, really looked this time, seeing in his face what no one else did.

"Are you sure-?" she began, and irritation bloomed in those blue eyes. This was not the first time she had asked.

"I said it'd be fine. I've been there before, Elizabeth."

"Of course you have," she recovered smoothly. She sat back and folded her hands over the desk, studying him again. He looked better, now that he was doing something and no longer watching the miles of water go by.

From above came a yell, the words indecipherable but the meaning clear. They were with range of Atlantis, and were now being guided in. The dockmaster would tell the City where they wanted to dock and the City would bring them around. Or it wouldn't; there were times when Atlantis did as it pleased, regardless of its inhabitants, though those times were few enough to be of little concern.

"Well," Elizabeth said crisply, picking up the papers she had pulled out earlier. "I'm going up to watch the docking. Are you coming?"

It was not meant to be a challenge, but the look on Rodney's face suggested he took it as one. "Sure," he muttered, looking none too thrilled at the idea. She understood and even sympathized, but she did not- could not- was requested to not- treat him differently than anyone else. So she shooed him out first and turned off the lights, tucking the papers close, then headed upstairs to see the majestic City.

* * *

><p>The City of Atlantis was neither malicious nor benevolent. It simply <em>was<em>, living a form of life that no creature on the planet could ever properly understand. It yielded to its inhabitants' demands because otherwise they might leave, and that was the closest to human emotion the City came- the fear of being alone.

It had its favorites, of course- some were kinder than others, some funnier, some simply fit better. Those who were born there had an indelible stamp of the City's magic printed onto them and were therefore most favored of all.

It missed the tii'ahna, those clever little creatures who had brought life back into it after so much silence. It knew it would miss the humans if- when- it submerged and was therefore lost to them. The tii'ahna were beings of magic and darkness, whereas humans belonged to the earth and the light. Neither one could replace the other.

It would miss its creators, but they were long since lost and never to return, and the City was not like the humans, to wish for what cannot be gained. It existed only in the moment- it remembered and nothing more. When they were gone, it would remember the tii'ahna and the humans, but it would not miss them. That was all it could offer.

The dockmaster told the City a boat was coming in, which it already knew. The dockmaster asked the City to bring it to the East Pier, and it obliged. There was a moment, a hesitation, when it sensed who was onboard. Then it went about doing its job and, when it was done, turned eyes that weren't eyes back to the sky above and watched.

* * *

><p>The Queen and her retinue had a standard procession, a rank-and-file-pomp-and-circumstance procedure to disembarking. Rodney, with his longstanding and well-known reputation as an ass, was granted permission to escape the pretentious display and flee while he could. The Queen's Master of Ceremony- a grand title for a glorified assistant- simply felt no need to voluntarily inflict Rodney upon herself.<p>

So Rodney fled. He was the first one down the ramp, pointedly not looking at the bottle-blue water only feet below, and managed to vanish into the thin crowd before it filled out into a proper audience. Two of the City's security stopped him, of course, and he had to show them his right of passage stamp and proof of identification, but they weren't as thorough as they might have been. He had, after all, come in on the Queen's transport, and the boat was not so very large a stranger could slip on board and remain unnoticed for the eleven-hour journey.

He had properly escaped and pointed himself in the direction of the labs when a hand caught his and pulled his back. He turned with a snarl, preparing to verbally eviscerate whoever the hell was bothering him now-

And found Teyla Emmagan on the other end of his vitriol, smiling at him with remembered fondness. Four years ago he had come to Atlantis the first time and had made a good many enemies and scant friends. Teyla had seemed especially been determined to give him more than his fair share of second chances, and so had seen the fumbling, grumpy, strangely endearing man that hid beneath the intellect and the attitude.

"It is good to see you again, Doctor McKay," she said, putting both her hands on his shoulders so she could turn him to face her. He dipped his head instinctively and she touched her forehead to his- a social greeting that he was far more comfortable with than, say, hugging.

"Really?" Rodney asked, honestly surprised. It wasn't the sort of thing people normally said to him.

"Of course," she replied with the studious honesty that made her so good at her job. She turned and started guiding him along the pier, heading for the nearest transporter. "Come. We have a few things to talk about."

* * *

><p>The great secret of Atlantis, the ultimate riddle everyone sought to solve, was the question of who had built it. Who had ever had the resources and knowledge to create such a magnificent City, never mind the power to bring it to life? If this one piece of the puzzle could be found, the belief held, the rest would fall easily into place, and all questions would be answered. Until then, the mysterious builders where known simply as the Ancestors.<p>

Or the Ancients, for that was what the tii'ahna had called them. A surprising number of people accepted and used this. Some even believed the tii'ahna had solved the riddle long ago and were now jealously hording the answer.

Whoever they were, they had been very human-like, for the tables and chairs in the commissary matched the human standard. As it was too early for dinner and too late for lunch, Teyla found a table near the panoramic window stretched across the west wall. She deposited her friend there and went to the kitchen itself. There was a kettle of Athosian tea on to boil- she had known Rodney would be on the transport and had been waiting for him.

She poured the tea into a more manageable teapot, carefully stacked two clayware cups- tea, she firmly believed, could not be properly enjoyed when drunk from a plastic or metal cup- deposited several sugar lumps into the cup on top, and easily carried it all back to the table.

One sugar lump went into her own cup, and for a moment she waited for the inevitable comment- she did not normally care for sugar in her tea. She had forgotten, however, that Rodney did not notice such things. He was busy staring in dismay at the tea. _I don't drink plants,_ he had said with a sneer four years ago. By the end of that evening, he had drunk a cup and a half of _plants_, and he wasn't getting away this time without at least matching that.

"If this is about that guy Zelneski, Elizabeth already-" Rodney began, the rose-glazed cup looking small and fragile in his large hands.

Teyla interrupted him, something she would never do to anyone else but which Rodney never seemed to mind. "Do you mean Zelenka? He is a smart man, Rodney. You will like him, eventually." She took a sip of her tea and watched him expectantly until he grudgingly did the same.

"This is about Commander Sumner," she continued, to his obvious irritation. Sumner and Rodney had not gotten along- Sumner viewed Atlantis as a military outpost, the Western Kingdoms' outermost guard against the advance of the southern islands' various ruling parties. Rodney saw it as a bastion of learning, the greatest scientific and magical achievement of all time. The commander had pushed his entire career to fully convert the City into a military base with no civilians allowed, which naturally made Rodney very unhappy.

In the very first year of Elizabeth's reign, the Cverik Empire- the sprawling dominion that had once covered all four-thousand plus of the south ocean's islands- had attacked with the intention of adding Atlantis to its collection. Sumner's predecessor had fallen in the attack, and Sumner himself had defended the City well enough in his place. He had never let anyone forget it, in his subtle way. It had been that attack that drove Elizabeth into relocating back to the old Royal City on the mainland, although she returned to Atlantis as often as she could.

"What about him? He trying declare Atlantis off-limits to all refugees and civilians again?" he asked bitterly, taking a large gulp of tea in his agitation. It took him visible effort to not spit it all right back into the cup.

"He is dead," Teyla said coolly. Rodney stared at her.

"Well, that's- uh, too bad. I didn't mean… I'm sorry?"

She gave him a stern look, not at all fooled by the near-miss. Sumner had been no friend of hers, either, for the very reason Rodney had named- Teyla was a refugee, relocated to the City since she would be scorned and dismissed on the mainland. Sumner had had an air of disdain about him when dealing with people like her, and although he was never unprofessional enough to do or say anything about it, he had also never tried to hide it. Still, it was not good manners to speak so of the dead.

"What happened?" Rodney asked when a safe amount of time had passed.

"I do not know," Teyla admitted. "Nobody knows much, and those who do see no need to share. His transport sank off the coast of Tyletrae; that, I know. There are rumors the tii'ahna are responsible."

"Pack of idiots," Rodney groused. "Like the tii'ahna would break a ninety-year silence to kill some vaguely important, completely replaceable human. Never mind that Tyletrae has some of the rockiest coastline in the Western Kingdoms and is notorious for its riptides and sharks."

"Neither of which tii'ahna are fond of," Teyla said as she hid her smile in her cup. Like many of the City's scientists, Rodney had a soft spot for the tii'ahna. Those who came before, Teyla had once told John. Those who came before had left more than just ghosts. In discovering the secrets of Atlantis, the scientists here had learned more about the tii'ahna than all the diplomats of centuries past combined.

She understood. It was not in her to hate a people for fighting to keep this City.

"So who replaced him?" Rodney asked, evidently done with insulting the rumormongers' intelligence for now.

"No one you know," she said, knowing even as she said it she could be wrong. Their new commander could have just as easily been reassigned from the Royal City. "His name is John Sheppard."

Nothing. Rodney gave a half-shrug and finished off his tea with a grimace, then gave an even more exaggerated one when Teyla poured him another half-cup. She put the last sugar lump in it as well- twice as much as usual, but it would help him get it down with minimum fuss.

Informing him of Commander Sumner's death had been one half of a two-part plan; now came the bigger, more personally relevant half. "Rodney, John has been here for less than two years."

Those blue eyes came up then, properly meeting her gaze for the first time. Rodney rarely gave people his undivided attention, and only gave them his partial attention for a limited time. That he had sat here this long, for a cup and a half of tea and a conversation about people he personally does not care about, was a sign of hard-won respect for Teyla.

Two years and two months, that was the rule. Those appointed Commander of one of the outlying posts- Atlantis being the most noteworthy but far from the only one- had to hold their positions for two years and two months without contest. Otherwise a motion passed by the Council or even a majority vote by the outpost's population could strip the commander of his rank, his career, and his reputation. After the twenty-six month mark, only the Queen could remove a commander, and the damage done to his reputation was far less severe.

In a post like Atlantis, where the majority were civilians who could so easily be stirred up to resent an overbearing military figure, those two years were tense indeed.

"And you're worried about- what, exactly?" he asked incredulously. "That I might start some sort of riot and get him kicked out?"

Put that way, it did sound a bit absurd. He would be far more likely to start a riot that ended with _him_ being kicked out, not John.

"John is a friend," she explained, as if she truly needed to. Rodney snorted and waved a dismissive hand.

"Then tell him to stay out of my way. I don't know what those military morons do all day, and I don't really care, so long as they aren't interrupting me while they're doing it."

"Of course," she agreed demurely, thinking as she did so that saying something like that to John was the fastest way to guarantee he would do the opposite. He was very much like Rodney in that regard.

Rodney was getting antsy, obviously not having planned on spending so much time on catching up with old friends, if he had planned on any at all. She reached over, put her hand over his on the table. His skin was cool to the touch.

"I am glad you have come, Rodney," she said sincerely. She didn't know how to explain why- the tension she could feel mounting in the City, the taste of blood on the wind. Something was coming, although she could not say what, and Rodney was…

Well. Rodney was Rodney; there was no better way to put it. She felt better for having him here.

He gave her a smile that was almost shy before pulling away and getting up. She listened to his muttered farewell and shifted in her seat as he left, turning to face the window and look out over the ocean. Normally smooth as glass, it was choppy with waves from a storm she could not see.

Not for the first time, she wondered what lay beneath the surface, what alien world the tii'ahna inhabited. Then she picked up the teapot and the cups and went back to her quarters.

* * *

><p>Jeromai stumbled again, barking his knee against yet another rock and drawing blood this time. He swore at the rock, at himself, at the new-moon night that offered too little light even for his eyes to see properly, at the cold biting wind he had literally no defense against. The flush of success had long since worn away as he found himself staggering over rocky terrain on legs no longer designed for walking.<p>

"Does the profanity help?" called a vaguely familiar voice, interrupting his tirade, and Jeromai whipped around with a snarl.

Mylin the Clanless crouched easily on an outcropping hanging above the path ahead. Although he was just as much tii'ahna as Jeromai, he managed to retain a sense of grace on land that was normally denied their people. He crouched now, hands folded together- not the way a human would do it, for tii'ahna have webbing between their fingers up to the first knuckle- and elbows resting on his knees. His long tail swept out and to the left, acting as the third tripod leg and keeping him balanced.

He was dripping wet, which meant the river was close. Jeromai's skin was itchy-dry and his chest heaving, inefficient lungs not quite able to process enough air to support his needs- a slow suffocation, taking about fifteen or twenty minutes to actually kill, and all the more painful for it.

Once they had been free, able to go where they liked and do what they wished. Now they were chained to the ocean as surely as the _l'hrenli_ were chained to the land.

"It doesn't hurt," Jeromai snapped, more than slightly relieved at the sight of the water dripping off the boy. The river here was broad and shallow and filled with rocks sharp as sharks' teeth. He had been going from one slightly deeper patch to the next, trying to balance out exposure to freshwater that made him dizzy and nauseas with exposure to air he could not properly breathe.

He continued grimly forward, ducking under Mylin's overhang and heading to the river. The water was cold as ice- was, in fact, melted snow runoff- but there was a dip here, deep enough for a tii'ahna to breathe, if not comfortably.

After a while he sat up in the water and looked to his unwanted companion. Mylin was now sitting on the riverbank, using sharp claws to pick at an errant scale near the base of his tail.

"Why are you here?" Jeromai asked warily. He had gone to great pains to not be followed. One ear- no longer small and immobile, now finned and highly expressive- flicked ever so slightly.

"The river goes only one place," Mylin replied philosophically. "The northern sea, unless I am mistaken. I go there sometimes, to remember. And you? Gone to pay homage to our ancestors?"

"Gone to drink of their power," Jeromai shot back, the elation of his mission's success once again filling him. "I found the Wellspring."

Mylin finally let the scale be and looked up, something unreadable in his eyes. Then it was gone and he smiled tightly. "Been drinking fresh water a day or two too long, I see."

Jeromai's ears went back tight against his skull and his eyes narrowed. Mylin saw this and immediately gave a verbal retreat.

"Forgive me, Clan Leader," he said, tone respectful and head bowed. "I spoke out of turn."

It was a load of crap, that deferential display. Mylin was a wanderer, a far more dangerous occupation for tii'ahna than for humans. He moved aimlessly between one clan and the next, never truly belonging with any of them. He was constantly putting himself in the authority of people he knew nothing about and so knew how to read people quickly and how to make them think he was giving them what they wanted.

Known for his sharp wits and sharper tongue, Mylin was allowed his unusual lifestyle only because he possessed the tii'ahna blood-gift of magic. His talents would have been scoffed at by their ancestors, but the tii'ahna had long since fallen from grace, and paltry as his powers would have been then, Mylin was the most powerful among them now. Jeromai knew this and used the boy, despite his personal dislike for the younger tii'ahna. He forgave this latest insult and the false display.

"It's well enough we ran into each other," he mused. "I might have need of you soon."

"To do what?" Mylin asked, quickly returned to his normal state of quiet amusement.

"To reclaim the City," Jeromai answered. Mylin's eyes went wide, honestly surprised for the first time that Jeromai had ever seen. Then he laughed, hard and dark.

"It would be an honor."

* * *

><p>The bay was a three-hour walk, a long way for tii'ahna. They made it in two. They had a schedule to keep and a war to plan.<p> 


End file.
